Friday, July 27, 2012

Tennessy Willems - Remarkable Pizzas in Ottawa

It’s been so long since Lucy and I have had some sister time. Last weekend, I made some reservations at Tennessy Willems one hot evening. Having previously eaten here with some friends, I recommended that we go have the pizzas at the restaurant in Hintonburg. I didn't know that Hintonburg began on the east side of Island Park Drive. I just assumed Hintonburg was part of Westboro. Woops.

We sat right by the large window and enjoyed the cool breezes. Lucy wanted to get everything off their specials menu but decided to get the carpricciosa pizza in the end. I wanted to try the wild boar. I tried the duck confit pizza last time. It was really good, but I wanted to try their other pizzas.

Iced tea for two.

We didn’t have to wait long for the pizzas. Lucy’s carpricciosa pizza looked great! The wild boar pizza looked good too, despite the slick of oil.

We traded slices of pizza. I thought the capricciosa pizza was a bit too complicated. For me, the fire-roasted tomato sauce and the artichokes were the stars.

Lucy's comment: The artichokes made it really tasty. I found that the mushrooms didn't add anything to the flavours at all, which was a little disappointing. The olives made it a tad too salty for my tastes. Overall, it wasn't very remarkable.

The generously-topped boar sausage pieces were really salty. I would’ve liked larger pieces of apples or just more pieces of caramelized apples to balance it out. The flavour composition of the boar pizza is similar to Hawaiian pizzas. You have the salty pork and the sweet fruit.

If I were to try and recreate this pizza, I'd want to see if the cheddar and apples could hold up on its own. Maybe I'd sprinkle a bit of fire-roasted tomato sauce in there.

Lucy's comment: I really loved the cheese paired with the apples. The sweet bites of apple paired well with the stinky, salty cheese. I'm going to attempt an apple tart with Balderson cheddar sometime.

Both pizzas were good, but this was probably my favourite two bites of the night: sweet and tangy fire-roasted tomato with the sweet and chewy crust. Aaang!

Tennessy Willems is currently one of the best Neapolitan-style pizza in Ottawa. I think their pizzas are more similar to Libretto than The Grand is. I highly recommend this restaurant.